Thomas Aquinas was once invited by the Pope to St Peter’s Basilica in Rome. In
one of the rooms the Pope showed him where the treasury was. There were priests counting a lot of money and so the Pope proudly said, “You see Thomas, gone are the days when the church will say, silver and gold we have none”. With amazement Thomas replied, “Yes, neither can it say now, ‘Rise up and walk.’ (Ravi Zacharias)

Out on the street sharing Jesus today. Met an older man of 69 we knew who has had an eventful life. Aged 17, his father sent him out to buy cigarettes. He ran off and joined the merchant Navy and came back 2 years later – with a pack of 200 ciggies!

Although not a Christian himself, he asked us “who was the first evangelist?” My colleague said “Philip is mentioned as the first evangelist.” The old guy replied: “No, it was Mary Magdalene – she said Jesus was alive.” Good answer!! I then asked him: “but do you believe it’s true, that Jesus rose from the dead – that’s the real question?” He didn’t give me a definite reply.

He told me he suffers pain all over his body ( he has been a heavy drinker for many years). I asked where the worst pain was, and he said “my neck”. I asked him to grade the pain on a scale of 1-10 and he said it was about 8. I told him that Jesus can prove to him that he is alive. I said I would pray for his pain to go. He agreed to give it a go.

I spoke to the neck and commanded the pain to go. I asked him how his neck felt now. He said:”it’s definitely better, about a 4 or 5 on the scale. He agreed I could pray again. I spoke to it again, and this time he reported it now down to a level 2. I said: “we can carry on doing this all day and you’ll get better and better”. I finally looked him in the eye and said:”The bible says that God is love.” He said: “I know”. I gave him a tract as we left.

POSTSCRIPT: The above post was written on 21st April 2011. I learned on 15th July 2011 that this man had recently died of a stroke. Life is unpredictable!

The other day I was out walking my daughter’s dog through a cemetery in Bristol and came across the gravestone of George Müller, the great Christian man of faith who lived by faith and housed hundreds of orphans in Bristol.

I took a photograph of the gravestone.

George Müllers Gravestone

I wonder whether this was a coincidence or was God speaking to me through this?

I attended my wife’s choir evening at a church about 30 miles away. I found myself sitting next to a guy whose wife was also singing in the choir. He had seen a “Healing On The Streets” team at work in his own town, so I shared some of my healing exploits, courtesy of Jesus’ power and authority.

I gave him my card with my website details. Sitting behind me was a man who, it turned out, knew the man who had christened me as an infant in a town 400 miles away. He also knew my maternal grandfather, and gave me an update on some of the folk in the church I grew up in!

The consequence of chasing after what seems to be a new and powerful anointing can eventually lead some people to have doubts about God, depression and a deep sense of personal failure.

Because they are so impressed with the signs and wonders, they lay aside their discernment, and open up their heart to a new, and often false, reality. They believe the supernatural things they are seeing must be from God, forgetting that Scripture also warns about the possibility of false prophecy, false signs and false wonders.

Deep in their psyche they conclude that this special anointing must be better and more powerful than anything they have ever experienced before – and they want it. They don’t realise that in seeking after someone else’s, apparently greater anointing, they are also saying that ‘whatever anointing I have must be inferior to what they’ve got!’

This is now fertile ground for doubts to arise about the God they have been worshipping all these years, who now seems so weak and powerless by comparison. There will be many who have chased an anointing who will eventually be in danger of losing their own faith in the true God, because the God on display seems bigger and better than their own.

They could look back on their own life of apparent inadequacy and hear the voice of an alien spirit saying, “how come your God so betrayed you, that he let you serve him for all these years without ever letting you have such power?”

What an awful dilemma! This is Deuteronomy 13 in 21st century clothing. In that very important chapter, God warns of prophets whose words come true but who, at the end of the day, will turn your heart away from the truth about God. What an awesome warning. God never told masses of people to try and receive another man’s anointing.

The miracle of the incarnation and the cross is that God has already given us His best – salvation through His Son and baptism in the Holy Spirit. People who run around the world trying to better this by catching another man’s anointing are, in reality, telling God that what He has already given is not enough. What an insult to our wonderful Saviour, what a deception. God will anoint us for service in the place of His calling. I can’t give my anointing away and I don’t want anyone else’s! I only want what God has for me.

The main reason people run after fancy new things is a mixture of their present dissatisfaction with what they have and their desperation for either healing, power or a new experience. There is such a lack of understanding in the Church about real healing of the human heart.

So many people want to deal with their inner inadequacy with something external and fancy. It’s the spiritual equivalent of the bling that the stars wear to catch everyone’s attention and impress their fans. Real beauty is never an add-on extra, but flows out of a saved and healed heart.

That’s why I am so passionate about real healing – not just because I long to see sick people getting better, but because it is God’s desire to make us beautiful for Him using the amazing, wonderful gifts of the Spirit we already have.

“We have this treasure in jars of clay, to show that this all-surpassing power is from God AND NOT FROM US.” (2 Cor 4:7). And this real treasure is definitely not caught from anyone else as part of a transferable and tangible anointing. And if we have to travel up to a third heaven to “get it”, you can be sure that what is brought down is false. Jesus came down from Heaven because fallen man couldn’t go up!

The only scriptural example of a genuine third heaven experience left Paul not even wanting to identify himself as the one who had had such an awesome experience (2 Cor 12). What a contrast to what’s happened in various parts of the world today as people are encouraged to have their own third heaven experience at will – not God’s will, as with Paul, but their will!

O God, help those who are caught in the deception of thinking that God’s amazing gift of Salvation and the baptism of the Holy Spirit is inferior to the “spiritual bling” that is appears to be on offer in Satan’s jewel shop!

Not long ago, my wife and a friend had some fun trying on fancy jewellery (bling) while on a short holiday. Later, she and her friend had a good laugh about all the wonderful diamonds they couldn’t afford and began to sing the old hymn, “When He cometh . . . to take up His jewels” They fell asleep laughing with thanksgiving that we are His precious jewels and we don’t need any additional spiritual bling to make ourselves attractive to God!